


Before History, Comes You and I

by IfItHollers



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Jealousy, Late night radio, Love at First Sight, Marriage, Meet-Cute, Multi, Past Abuse, Past Domestic Violence, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Relationship Negotiations, Stanley Uris Lives, Swing Dancing, V-shaped polyamory, bi!richie, gay!eddie, mix of book and film canon, the Losers Club are soulmates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:00:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24190957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IfItHollers/pseuds/IfItHollers
Summary: Eddie looks from him to Bev, how between her pale face and her bright hair she seems to glow in the dim room.You love her, she loves you, she was practically your sister,he reminds himself, and tries to keep his thoughts kind and friendly towards her.But he’s never been able to control himself around Richie. When he looks at Richie he feels the crack of the thunder in the back of his head and thinks,You were mine first.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom & Eddie Kaspbrak, Beverly Marsh & Kay McCall, Beverly Marsh/Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak & Beverly Marsh, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 26
Kudos: 98
Collections: Quarantine It Fic Fest





	1. Bev, Then

**Author's Note:**

> PROMPT: Book Canon + Bevchie + Reddie: Reuniting at dinner, Eddie is surprised to realize that Beverly and Richie somehow found each other and ended up married, despite not remembering their childhood together. Up to you if bi!Richie/Beverly or a marriage of convenience between them. I want Eddie being really jealous and relationship negotiations! No bi!Eddie though please!
> 
> I'm not so great at the straight-up book-verse, so it's still a mix of book and film canon, meaning that the encounter with It takes place in 2016. (Sorry prompter! I don't know what happens in the 80s!) But characterization is probably more book-heavy than the rest of my fics.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Feminism and capitalism are not mutually exclusive, thank God," [Kay] had once told Bev..." (Stephen King, _IT_ Chapter 9)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings for this chapter: Bev definitely has some post-traumatic stress from recent intimate partner violence. It manifests in flashbacks and intrusive thoughts about it. There's a lot of hypervigilance and weighing strange men as threats, self-blaming, and an unhealthy relationship to power and toxic masculinity. Also, I don't know whether or not Kay actually likes her boyfriend or whether it's compulsory heterosexuality.

Bev is still recovering from a broken nose when she meets her husband.

It’s the casual nature of the action that really gets to her. The boyfriend is long gone by now—got a better job at a bigger theater, so as far as Bev knows she’ll never have to see him again. As far as she hopes. Sometimes men like that latch into the work they’ve put into a woman, rather than go the risk of finding someone new who might not let him hit her. This one wasn’t like that. Too up his own ass to make a long-term project of her.

Not that Bev _let him_ , exactly. She still feels stalled out. Still in shock, maybe.

She knows Kay’s worried. Kay went with her to the ER, held her hand while the doc reset her nose, had a lot of words for the doc’s general pitying attitude and assurances that this wouldn’t affect Bev’s looks, had _even more words_ for Bev declining to involve the police. Kay has opinions about what Bev should and should not do; the doc has opinions about men who hit women but also about the women who don’t leave. Bev said it and it came out matter-of-fact: “my boyfriend hit me.” The doc clearly had protocol to be working off of, because the next thing she knew she had access to a domestic violence shelter and a counselor—a man—but Bev doesn’t want any of that shit right now. She just didn’t see the point in lying about it.

He was midsentence when he did it. Bev doesn’t even remember what she said that he reacted to like that. The heel of his hand just came up and, before she knew it, drove into her face. Bev still feels like she’s living in that moment just before the pain hit her, with the crunch of her own cartilage still ringing in her ears. Numb.

She doesn’t talk much about it now. Tells herself she’s trying to put it behind her. She hasn’t had any trouble breathing since then—though thinking about whether or not she’s had trouble breathing makes her throat and chest constrict, even though that’s not the source of the problem. Kay—winding down from spitting mad and _you should, he should_ , tells her that no, she hasn’t heard her snoring since the break. So the reset was fine, and she probably doesn’t have a deviated septum (or at least one that’s _significantly_ deviated). The man’s gone; CUTS is still giving her enough work to keep her busy, so she can pay her half of the rent and buy food; and Kay’s eyes stop going flinty and protective when she looks at Bev and start going soft and raw and concerned.

“Let’s play the game,” Kay suggests one evening, and Bev doesn’t have a reason to say no, so they play.

The game is this: they are two women—Bev fresh out of college with a degree she has no interest in, working for a theater; Kay struggling along in the entry-level fashion job she always wanted, embarrassed by how old she was by the time she got it. They have very little money. They go thrift shopping almost constantly, like if they drape themselves in suspect cloth, the financial anxiety won’t be able to find them.

What they do have includes: a full-length fur coat in astonishingly good condition, which Kay claims is from a Native American furrier up in Canada, and a matching fur scarf. Bev’s all for animal rights, but a brain warped by what she dimly remembers as a poor childhood won’t let her get rid of something in such good condition—and on those evenings when Kay lends it to her, she’s grateful for it when the wind off the lake cuts straight through her. “Nah, baby, we’re environmental, but we’re not _wasteful_ ,” Kay says, stroking a wide-toothed plastic comb through Bev’s yard of hair. “If it works, if it doesn’t need replacement, keep it.”

Other victories from their thrift shopping experiences include: knockoff designer bags (“I won’t take them to work, but just be happy you spend less for the knockoffs and they look just as good”); a wine-red velvet dress as slippery to wear as it is to touch; a convoluted blue knit shawl not as warm as the fur coat, but what’s as warm as the fur coat?; a pair of heels shaped like wingtips that Kay just adores, with the broguing up the sides and a pinstriped silk lining; a slinky silver cocktail dress; a red satin jacket that isn’t a kimono but definitely wants to be a kimono, except for the black fringe on the bottom; paste pearl earrings; black velvet heels; a blue zircon ring with what looks like a beaded silver setting.

The game is: they go out. Sometimes to department stores to try on shoes and to make polite conversation with salespeople about fiancés they don’t have, vacations they’ll never take. Sometimes to lounges—not to clubs, but places where they can order one cocktail each and sit on a velvet chaise, back to back, and pretend to be 1920s flappers taking a break, while a woman sings jazz in the corner and gets better as the night goes on. Sometimes just to walk up and down the rows of boutiques and window shop, their dark glasses on. Nobody knows they aren’t rich. They imagine how it is to live that way.

Bev doesn’t know if she’d call that success or happiness, but it’s a relief, sometimes, to play at living like that. And when Kay’s sitting with her shoulder pressed right up against hers—human skin is so hot out in public like that, when either the air conditioning’s blasting or it’s fucking cold in Chicago—they don’t make eye contact but they talk; they play as dramatic as women in old movies. Bev loves _Rear Window_ , imagines Grace Kelly sinking onto the couch in her full skirt with the leaf sprig pattern at the waist. Grace Kelly isn’t quite the Cinderella story that Bev could ever achieve: one minute your dad’s winning Olympic gold, then you’re a movie star, then you’re a princess? But it seems like a happier ending than Norma Jean Mortensen. Bev’s done the ward of the state shit already; there’s no escapism to be found in Marilyn.

Kay offers her the fur coat for the night, and she’ll take the scarf; but Bev’s been running hot lately, cold as she feels in her head. “No, you can wear it,” Bev says. She wears the wine-red velvet with the bright red satin, red lipstick with enough blue in it to stop it from clashing with her hair, concealer for the bruises under her eyes. It’s too late in the day to put on the dark glasses. When she’s ready, she leans in the doorway in a parody of elegance, and Kay laughs. Bev smiles, detecting an emotion on her sonar for maybe the first time since the _crack!_

The place is the Blue Velour. Bev has no idea whether it’s being sincere or ironic in its old-timey jazz lounge aesthetics, but there’s a grand piano and a microphone in the corner. Some nights they have a live band, up on the stage. There’s a little sign on the door advertising _Swing Night_ , which brings Bev to pause before she squints at it more closely and realizes it’s a themed night of swing dancing once a week, led by professional instructors. That makes her smile a little.

Kay takes that as encouragement. “Yeah? You swing dance?”

Bev has a phantom sensation—someone holding her sweaty hands with just as sweaty hands, reeling her out into a spin, the way that the snap at the very end of it pulls her back by the wrists. Her own voice rising not in fear, but in laughter.

“Maybe?” she manages, scrunching one eye shut before she has to conclude that, yes, that’s all there is to the memory. “Can’t remember.”

“Pretty sure I had to do that either in gym class or at, like, church camp,” Kay says with a deep frown.

“Did you go to church camp?” Bev asks.

Kay shrugs. “It was like a day camp, there were art classes, it was extremely Protestant.”

Bev doesn’t remember much religious upbringing for herself, except for one state-appointed therapist who asked if she had considered “giving it all to God.” Bev was in the middle of the shift that occurred between high school and community college where she became deeply concerned about punctuality, and already understood that nobody was going to do shit for her if she didn’t do it for herself, so she declined to give it all to God, and in fact implied that God could pry her concerns out of her cold dead hands. In those words.

Her working relationship with that therapist was already kind of fucked anyway. Previously he suggested that wearing more makeup would make her feel better. Bev remembers… her mother, she thinks. Lipsticks lined up on the dresser in her parents’ bedroom, their shapes still pressed into that kiss-curve meant to wrap over the lip. Mom had to wear makeup to work every day. Concealer, most days, too. Bev doesn’t remember what her job was.

“I don’t know what that means,” Bev says to Kay.

“Oh, like—happy about religion,” Kay says. “There was a musical at the end—it’s not important. Let’s get drinks.”

Bev stands at five-foot, four-inches, and is accustomed to having to wait around to get the bartender’s attention. Kay is five-nine and leans across the bar like a man, the shoulder of her fur coat standing up plush behind her jaw. The bartender turns to her immediately.

“Screwdriver?” Kay asks Bev, because it’s Bev's favorite and she’s not going to apologize for it. Bev nods. “One screwdriver, one jalapeño margarita, please.”

They sit and sip their cocktails and talk about the apartment. It’s too crowded for just the two of them—there’s a sort of artificial divide along the common areas caused by a long and useless hallway, and Kay has sort of claimed the kitchen table as part of her workspace and Bev has accidentally taken over the living room. Kay’s art desk and drafting pencils and things are in her bedroom, but Bev had no hope of getting sewing done all in her own ten-by-ten bedroom. They eat their meals on the couch or standing up in the hallway. Bev whisks finished costumes into her bedroom as soon as they’re done to protect them from pizza and pasta sauce, and into her car to take to the theater as soon as she can, but one fuckup with a satin dress the theater asked her to alter for _Camelot_ was enough.

Kay exists in a perpetual state of wanting to improve the apartment, but this doesn’t so much feature taking things to work and putting them away to free up communal space so much as it involves acquiring new things to put on the walls and on surfaces and to swallow up what little free space is there. Bev, whose memory of coming home from the ex-boyfriend’s place with the smell of blood in her nose is still fresh, doesn’t know what it would take to make the place feel homier.

She doesn’t remember her mother ever talking to her about it, but Kay strongly approves that Bev never moves in with her boyfriends. “You need your own space and your own money,” she says. “You know when women got the right to open their own bank accounts? 1975. If I ever get married, I’m not giving that up.”

Bev was enchanted by the way Kay said that. _If I ever get married_ —like it’s in question. Bev likes to think of herself as an independent person, someone who makes her own way in the world, but men seem almost like an inevitability. They fall into her space and Bev has an idea that, someday, she will marry one of them. The thought is colored neither with longing nor horror.

Kay’s boyfriend, Sam, is rich. Bev has met him maybe twice but they’ve been together for at least a year, and Bev has no idea what to make of the relationship. Kay seems to have strongly mixed feelings about it, and Bev can’t tell if that’s because she has strongly mixed feelings about her independence and financial disparity and power dynamics in relationships—all of which are things that Kay has drunkenly ranted to her about, while swearing up and down that she would make her own way in the world but that if a man wants to be used why not use him?—or because Kay doesn’t love him. She doesn’t talk about him much with Bev, and Bev has never pressed. If Bev were to press, she might have to talk about her own boyfriends in turn, and Kay would seize on that like a terrier.

“I mean, I could get some canvases,” Kay says. “I have—like—ideas, it’s just everything I draw is women in white dresses with big black hats.”

“And red sashes,” Bev says.

She has seen this drawing before. Kay keeps coming back to it, in her freetime sketches when she’s working to improve her drawing, not the technical skills she uses to make flats. The figure is always aligned right, like a text box, and her head is inclined so that just her mouth is visible under the brim of the hat. It’s an image that Bev has seen over and over again before—not just in Kay’s sketches, but out in the world, in ideas of what people consider _the mysterious woman_ to be.

“It’s boring,” Kay says.

“You can draw something else,” Bev points out.

Kay shakes her head. “No, it’s like, when I was seven I only drew ballerinas. And they were in the same pose, over and over again—different hair color, different costume color. Clearly I am trying to work through something, subconsciously, I just don’t know what.”

Bev treads carefully here. “The popularization of the femme fatale?”

Kay smiles and Bev relaxes internally a little bit, knowing that she phrased it correctly. “My lingering rage toward Coco Chanel?”

Kay does not work for Chanel. If Kay worked for Chanel, she would not be here.

“You can definitely do something with rage towards Coco Chanel,” Bev says.

Kay smirks a little. “Channel.”

Bev shrugs and drinks. “I mean, I don’t mind, if you want to fill the apartment with canvases of women in black hats. But maybe you should go back to ballerinas?”

Kay cackles. “Back to my roots?”

Bev was just thinking of the difference between childhood sketches—the bubble heads, the smiling closed eyes, the snowman buns stacked for women’s hair—and what Kay is able to create now. But the idea of _back to your roots_ throws her for a moment. She imagines ballerinas. Degas. She’s seen some fine sketches of Rudolf Nureyev, but no photos; she admires his eyebrows.

“Yeah, back to your roots,” she says, it coming out softer than she might otherwise. She looks down into the yellow of her drink. In screwdrivers is the only way she likes orange juice, actually; she has no problem eating oranges and orange slices—has vague memories of starving-hungry high school days peeling an orange tucked away in a closet behind the auditorium—but she doesn’t like the juice except as a mixer. She feels that, after all the trouble life has given her and continues to give her, she ought to be permitted to move past the indignity of pulp, no questions asked.

There’s no pulp in her screwdriver. She’s down almost to ice now. The cubes stand out like teeth.

“I did a sketch series with a dancer in college,” Kay says.

Bev runs the callus of her middle finger across the condensation on her glass. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. She—” Kay frowns. “I needed a model, I had a little bit of money, one of the dancers was willing to model nude. Her name was Margaret, she asked me to call her Mag.”

Bev, who sometimes feels inexplicably sick when people call her _Bevvie_ , understands the reduction to one syllable. Kay, whose full legal name is Kay McCall, no Katherines or middle names or confirmation names, frequently seems baffled by nicknames. She calls Bev _Bev_ because that’s what Bev introduced herself as. To Kay, _Beverly_ is an afterthought or a way to get Bev’s attention urgently.

Kay seems lost in thought, staring not down into her drink, but over at the grand piano. It’s set down from the stage instead of up on top of it; Bev has watched the rigmarole of transporting a little piano back and forth for shows, but she still thinks that a baby grand is meant to be decorative, not to take up so much floor space. Maybe it’s just a pain in the ass to move it out of the way for Swing Night.

“I’m pretty sure I still have some of those canvases. Maybe. In a storage unit or something.”

Bev looks around at her. “You have a storage unit?”

“From, like, leftover furniture and shit from college? Pretty sure, yeah,” Kay says.

“You’re not _sure_ whether you have a storage unit? Are you keeping up with payments and everything?”

“No, I mean, I’m pretty sure they’re there,” Kay says. “With, like, my lawn chairs and shitty patio furniture I would bring home if it would fit on our shitty patio.”

Bev doesn’t think that the balcony out back is so shitty. There’s a real clothesline out there, and more than once Bev has worked through some shit by dragging the rug in her bedroom out over it and beating it with the end of a broom handle. It’s old-fashioned. She enjoys the ritual maybe more than she enjoys the rug.

“I mean, if you want to fill our home with canvas paintings of a naked dancer named Mag, I’m cool with that,” Bev says.

Kay grins. “She was like you—like—” She holds one hand flat below her nose.

“Yes, yes, Bev’s very short, we all get that,” Bev says. She crosses her legs at the knees. Her calves grate each other; she didn’t bother shaving her legs before going out with Kay.

Bev has never asked about Kay and girls. Part of her figures that if Kay wants to tell her, she will. And in the meantime, Kay has the boyfriend. Bev’s idle curiosity wonders if the Mag paintings will be illuminating.

Kay holds her cocktail by the lip of the glass and swirls her margarita slush. “Want to go for another round?” Then she drains her glass.

Bev feels that pinch right in her wallet. “Uh,” she says.

“I’ll buy.”

“Can you?” It’s a legitimate question.

Kay pulls out her pocketbook—it’s black and shiny, patterned to look like crocodile with the broad square scales. “I can.”

She hands Bev some cash. Bev doesn’t mind getting the drinks, resigned as she is to getting ignored by the bartender.

When she gets up—the clack of her heels on the floor—she feels something settle over her. It’s cold, like metal, and it closes around her like a curtain sliding shut. Bev pauses, the fine hairs on the back of her neck standing up, and then walks through the little archway into the second room with the bar in it. What is happening? What’s she looking out for?

She leans one elbow on the bar and waits for the guy behind it to stop what he’s doing—rinsing out glasses; it’s not that busy tonight—and to take her order.

A man’s voice in her ear asks, “Want to hear a line?”

That strange cold feeling breaks. It wasn’t fear—more like scrutiny, but she’s never felt like that when someone’s looked at her before. Bev turns, skeptical, and the guy—big and tall, unsurprisingly—reels back.

“Holy shit,” he says. He’s got to be around her age; he might be built big, but his hair’s still floppy and his face is smooth. Bev thinks for one second, clearly, _I know you!_ before she realizes she doesn’t. His blue eyes search her face. “How’s the other guy?”

Bev blinks. “What?”

He brings up his thumb and index finger and swipes them under his lower eyelids, and Bev realizes he’s treating her like a boxer because of her visible black eyes. So that tells her how well her concealer is holding up, up close. Great.

“Oh,” she says, and then casually: “Dead.”

His eyebrows go up. “Oh,” he says. “So are you a hitman?”

“I prefer assassin,” she says, and glances pointedly back to where Kay waits.

Kay, of course, is not oblivious to the guy approaching. She twinkles her fingers in Bev’s direction.

“Ah,” the guy says, taking the hint. “Do you—” He leans over the bar.

The bartender seems to find it a lot easier to notice a man over six feet tall in his peripheral vision. Sometimes Bev wonders what it would be like to have that kind of power: to be big, to be assumed a threat until proven otherwise. It’s not just that she’s smaller than this guy, it’s that she’s thin and short and a woman. If she were a great dark shape moving just out of sight—a great red shape, she imagines—maybe that would trigger that ancient fight or flight response. Get heads turning, double-takes until people observe that she just wants a goddamn drink or two.

It’s probably fucked up that the first thing she thinks of, when she runs into a strange man, is of the danger. She wishes she could chalk that up to recent events, but it’s an ongoing thing. She sees big men—broad men, square men, muscular men, athletic men, fit men, men who could plausibly take a swing at her—and something in her head thinks _huh_. She could date shorter men, gentler men, men who don’t weight twice what she does, but she doesn’t. And, somehow, she’s always surprised when the first blow comes.

The guy who asked if she’d like to hear a line turns to look at her, now that he’s hooked the bartender for her. “What are you and your friend drinking?”

“Jalapeño margarita,” Bev says. Her brain provides her with the mental image of a round red maraschino cherry at the bottom of a dark glass. “And a Manhattan.” She can pay for those with the money Kay gave her, but she’s reasonably sure that she knows where this is going.

“Jalapeño margarita and a Manhattan for the Manchurian candidate,” the guy says. The bartender gives him an incredulous look and asks for Bev’s ID, but when she shows it to him he just nods and starts pulling out glasses.

Bev’s instinct is to frown at the guy, because right around now is when a man usually throws his drink order in with hers and insinuates himself into the outing. She glances back at Kay, who has put her feet up on Bev’s empty chair and is lounging in her seat so that her fur coat drags on the floor, her expression that of someone who has less than twenty-four hours to live.

“What’s the line?” Bev asks him.

He looks at her and blinks. “Huh?”

“The line,” she says. “What was your line?”

She sees the moment that he remembers his own words, the sudden click of understanding in his eyes. “Oh,” he says, and looks around at the bartender. “Do you have a pen?” he asks.

The bartender is in the middle of trying to do his job. He offers the guy a tiny golf pencil, and the guy holds it in his big hand like it’s the stubby end of a broken crayon, and scrawls on a cocktail napkin. It’s either the line or his number.

“Listen, I don’t want to be a complete asshole,” he says, and pushes the napkin towards Bev. Bev glances down at it; it’s his phone number.

“Partial asshole is acceptable?”

“Yeah, I think the MPAA rating is lower for just partial asshole,” he says. Bev snorts despite herself. “A certain portion of asshole is unavoidable, sorry. I just—” He falls silent when Bev glances up into his face.

She feels caught, somehow. Not snared, not trapped. It’s more like gravity. That weird sense of _something is about to happen_ that settled over her when she walked over to the bar now seems to want to hold her in suspense.

 _I know you_ , she thinks again, and doesn’t understand _how_. She doesn’t know anyone.

Behind him, the bartender continues muddling a jalapeño in the bottom of Kay’s margarita glass. She can almost smell it over the wood varnish and alcohol smell of the space. She doesn’t eat jalapeños enough to get a sense of their taste independent of _heat_ ; she imagines that when the bartender crushes it with his little pestle there’s a burst of fine mist in the air, and that contains _spice_. Warmth. Green. Life.

The guy blinks twice, swallows, and turns his head to watch the bartender for a moment. He’s got a good jawline; Bev’s eyes go to it immediately, and then lift back to his when he looks back at her. He seems to have gotten himself together a bit, because he gives her a weak grin and says, “Yeah, so, for good times and mediocre lines.” He nudges the napkin towards her a little bit, looks over at Kay, and inclines his head in something like a nod.

“What’s your name?”

“What?”

Maybe he’s younger than her. How much younger? The bartender didn’t bother to card him, Bev notes with some resentment. Maybe he hasn’t done this much.

“Your name,” she says patiently. “You didn’t tell me your name.”

“Oh,” he says. “Rich.”

Bev blinks once at him. The bartender pours Kay’s margarita from a tumbler into her glass and then starts assembling Bev’s screwdriver.

“Are you?” she asks.

He grins once, quick. “No. But you can put your cash away, I’ll pay.”

It makes her nervous, sometimes, when men pay for her drinks. She doesn’t owe him anything for buying her a Manhattan—which she will admit is an old man drink at the best of times, but she wants that maraschino cherry—but she doesn’t trust that men always know that. The fact that he’s buying for Kay too unwinds some of that tension in her gut. Is he gonna let her walk away?

“Beverly,” she says, and takes the napkin out of his hand. Inexplicably a hard line forms in her head: _If he calls me Bevvie, I’m out_. She doesn’t know why, it doesn’t always bother her.

But instead he smiles and singsongs, “Bev, Bev, Beverly,” each syllable tripping out of his mouth lightly, like her name is a new toy to play with. He glances down at the napkin, still held between them, and says, “Just, uh, and this probably is not an issue, not between one and four in the morning, I have work.”

Bev laughs again because that sounds so much like an invitation for further questions, trying to make her curious about what he does. “I’ll resist the urge,” she says, and doesn’t explain how likely it is that she’ll be up from one to four in the morning, alone in the apartment, wondering whether Kay’s deep enough asleep that she can use the sewing machine.

He walks away first, actually—pays for the drinks when prompted and then walks away before they’re both up on the bar for Bev to take. He walks completely out of the room that the bar’s in, under the archway, actually past Kay in the front room with the stage, and then turns and goes out of sight. Kay tracks him for longer than Bev does, her head turning and apparently following him up the stairs, and then she gives Bev a _what the hell was that?_ kind of look.

Bev thanks the bartender and takes the drinks back over. She hands Kay her cash once more.

Kay looks somewhat amused. “So apparently that guy’s buying?”

“Apparently,” Bev replies. She tucks the cocktail napkin back in her bag.

Kay watches her do it with faint skepticism. “You know,” she says, tone contemplative and ironic, “the point of getting out like this was not to immediately find you a replacement guy.”

Bev gives a short laugh. Kay’s joking, but she’s really not. Bev’s dating life causes Kay no end of stress, and understandably so, but if she pressed any more about it than she does Bev would shut down and not tell her anything. They’ve had some tense moments in the past—usually over Bev’s sprained wrist or bruised kidney or something—but Bev has never had to actually voice the ultimatum between him.

“I promise I didn’t go out seeking a replacement guy,” Bev says. She doesn’t want to have to explain the weird feeling of apprehension, maybe even predestination, that happened to her as she crossed into the next room. Doorways are weird places; you never know what you’re walking into.

Kay tucks her cash back into her pocketbook. “I know.” She shrugs. “It was Sam’s money anyway.” There’s a certain amount of resignation in her voice.

Bev is not accustomed to such admittances from Kay, who fights so fiercely to have space of her own, money of her own, security of her own.

She picks up her spicy margarita. There’s a whole jalapeño pinned on the rim, amidst the salt. She holds it out to Bev, who accepts a sip and comes away with her chapped lips burning. Kay smiles a little.

“Sam giving you cash?” Bev asks.

Kay shakes her head. “He owed me for something or another. It balances out. But.” She shrugs and leans back, big glass in her hand. Her expression is philosophical and her voice low when she says, “Sometimes I hate him.”

Even if Sam has never laid hands on Kay like that—Bev thinks she understands. It’s complicated. She doesn’t bother telling Kay that she can always walk away, because Kay knows.

“Cheers,” Bev says, and clinks her glass against Kay’s. The maraschino cherry at the bottom spins, and she thinks, without understanding why, of a balloon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bev's theater, CUTS, is short for the Chicago Underground Thespian Society. I made it up, based on the Cincinnati Underground Secret Society (thank you, Travis McElroy). This fic's Bev characterization takes heavy influence from [ Construction and Alteration](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21183089) by stitchy. The Bev/Richie storyline takes heavy influence from _The Time Traveler's Wife_ by Audrey Niffenegger. The Blue Velour is based on the Blue Velvet from the Sims 4, my other true love.


	2. Rich, Then

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "It seems he just cannot stop remembering, he thinks the memories will eventually drive him mad, and now he bites down on his lip and puts his hands together palm to palm, tight, as if to keep himself from flying apart. He feels that he _will_ fly apart, and soon. There seems to be some mad part of him which actually looks forward to what may be coming, but most of him only wonders how he's going to get through the next few days." (Stephen King, _IT_ Chapter 8)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know what the hell happens on late night radio. I read some articles, but they were English, and also not set in the 90s.
> 
> Content warnings for this chapter: hypothetical drug use. Armchair philosophy. Tobacco use.

Rich’s caller says she’s in the last year of high school, which he guesses means she’s maybe seventeen or eighteen. It’s two in the morning, which means that most of the regular crowd have jumped the boat by now and the fringes are here. Apparently this includes high school kids staying up late.

“And then my dad said that if I wanted, he would get me public speaking lessons,” she says.

Rich lifts his chin and pulls a face, though she won’t be able to see it. “Are those a thing?” He’s pretty sure that, like, violin lessons are a thing, but he’s never heard of public speaking lessons.

Then again, when he was a kid, his parents’ goal seemed to be to get him to stop talking, so maybe it's always been a thing and it just never came up.

“I guess?” the kid offers. “But, like, public speaking is not the problem.”

“You know, I’m getting that vibe,” Rich says.

It’s not like he gets a lot of listeners on the night shift, but they have _enough_. Sometimes the phone call format gives the illusion of privacy, but the intimacy is real. Something about the dark outside and the careful quiet tone that Rich has cultivated over years working this shift.

“Pretty sure—” He looks around for Steve and says, “Hang on, I have to ask legal if I’m allowed to mention a comedian’s bit by name.”

He checks with Steve and then comes back.

“Okay sorry about that, _a certain comedian_ has this thing about public speaking being a bigger—like, more common fear than death itself. So, like, are you scared of death?”

“I mean—I guess?” she says. “It’s all pretty abstract.”

“I just think, if you could conquer all the most common fears in America, you could be friggin’ invincible by the time you graduate high school.”

The kid laughs, which is better than how tearful she sounded on the call earlier.

The gist is—this kid is in some kind of special singing group at school, but has stage fright when singing solo in front of large groups and people she knows. There are auditions for a regional choir coming up at school at the end of this week, and for rehearsal, her director had everyone who signed up to participate sing in front of the class. Rich’s caller shook so bad she couldn’t hit one right note. And then the director told her that she was only taking students who took the music seriously to the audition.

“I mean, you can rehearse with us,” Rich says.

Steve raises his eyebrow at him and Rich knows what he’s thinking— _what if the kid sucks?_ But it kills some time. And they’ve aired stupider shit than a kid actually needing comfort after a social _faux pas_.

“And—is this teacher the kind of person you can talk to?”

“Sometimes?” the kid offers. “I get the feeling she doesn’t want to be doing the job she’s doing, she wants to be, like, in the deep south directing a black gospel choir.”

“Don’t we all,” Rich says. “But—hey, you’re on the radio. And that’s a moral victory, right?”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“I mean, of all the students who take this sh—stuff seriously, you’d be the only one on the radio. Are you making tapes off the radio? I know there's some of you out there who record off the radio still. You could record yourself, bring that in as evidence you’re taking it seriously.”

“I don’t know how to do that,” the kid says.

Rich laughs. “Glad to hear not all our listeners are pirates. Seriously, like, warm up your pipes. What do they say—cut your eyeteeth on us?”

“What does _that_ mean?” the kid asks, aghast.

“Yeah, I never liked that one either,” Rich says. “My eyes don’t have teeth and that’s how I like it. Do you want to sing for us?”

The kid pauses. “How many people are listening?”

Rich checks. “Do you really want me to answer that?”

“Guess not,” she says.

Steve is waving through the glass.

“Hang on, Jane, we’ve got a legal question.” Rich slides one of his earphones off and raises his eyebrows at Steve.

“What’s she singing?” Steve hisses. “I don’t want to have to pay royalty fees for—”

Rich ignores the rest of it. “Hey, Jane, what’s the name of the song?”

“Uh. ‘Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day,’” Jane replies.

Rich looks back up at Steve and says into the mic, “Yeah, I don’t think we’re gonna end up paying royalties for ‘Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day,’ Steve. Seriously, go for it—what is it, your audition piece?”

“I won’t do the whole thing,” Jane says. Rich is being serious about the offer and the moral victory here, but also he’s kind of relieved he won’t have to listen to the entirety of “Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day.” She takes a deep breath—he can hear the shake even in the crackle from the phone, and then she sings in a high fragile soprano. It’s very Christian. It’s also pretty good, actually—super religious, and faster-paced than he would have expected, and her voice leaps up into trills apparently effortlessly. _“This have I done for my true love!”_ she sings.

Rich waits for a breath to make sure she’s done before he says, “Holy—” He catches himself. “—crap, Jay-bird.”

There’s a smile in her voice when she says, “Pun not intended?”

“All my puns are intended,” Rich says. “But like—whoa. Like, screw anyone who says you’re not taking this music seriously. How many kids were listening at your audition?”

“Like thirty,” Jane replies.

Steve is frantically shaking his head.

“Well, Steve is behind the glass telling me I’m not allowed to say how many people are tuning in right now,” Rich says. He gets the point of it—if they’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel for listeners, they don’t want to literally air their business—but they have at least eighty people listening to them right now. “But it’s more than thirty.”

Jane responds in a burst of giggles.

“Does that help?” Rich asks.

“Yes,” she says quickly. “Yes, thank you so much.”

“You are more than welcome,” Rich says. “Listeners, this is a one-time thing, don’t call in asking to sing your favorite, uh, traditional English madrigal. This is a special thing for people who take music seriously, and that’s me and my girl Jane here. Do you have school in the morning?”

There’s a pause. “Me?” Jane asks.

Rich laughs. “Yeah, you, dude.”

“Uh—I guess. I was gonna try to talk my parents into letting me stay home sick.”

“You can’t do that,” Rich says. “That’d be—” He shakes his head.

It’s been a while since he was in high school, but he suspects that his sensitivity to what could get the shit kicked out of you in high school is still too high for someone who is, ostensibly, a grownass man.

Also he’d never have had the balls to join a _choir_ in high school. Maybe it’s different for girls.

“That’d be admitting surrender,” Rich says. “I really think you should make your director drag you off that bus, but I suspect legal wouldn’t like it if I were to officially advise that, so I’m not officially advising that.”

Being the voice on the radio gives him the illusion of authority—getting to control who gets to talk and not, but Rich is still kind of just a chump. A nocturnal chump.

“But really, we both know you’re taking this seriously. Get some sleep. Go to school. Someday when you’re a famous, uh, choral music singer, I’ll be able to say you got your start on my show.”

“Okay,” Jane says warmly. “Good night.”

“Good night, Jane. Give my love to Tarzan.” Rich ends the call. In his DJ voice he says, “That was ‘Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day,’ performed by Jane Last-Name-Protected. Jane Doe.” He pauses. “Actually, come to think of it, Jane might be a fake name. Touché, Jane.

“I could never have done anything like that in high school. I mean, y’all don’t want to hear me sing, trust me, but I was not brave in high school. I’m not brave now. I have approached a woman in a bar once in my life, I bought her and her friend drinks, I gave her my number, and then I ran away. Like, fled. I kept doing this thing with my arms, I was like an octopus. Shoutout to my girlfriend. She’s little but she’s a better octopus wrestler than you’d expect. Sometimes she listens to the show, so I hope she thinks that’s funny.

“If not, here’s ‘Modern Love’ by David Bowie. I'm sorry, Red.”

He puts the track on and shoots thumbs-up at Steve through the glass. Steve is unimpressed. It’s impressive, the degree to which he conveys _I am not impressed_ through just flat eyebrows and mouth. Satisfied that he’s done his job—and made Steve’s blood pressure spike just enough to get his exercise in, to keep Steve in peak condition—he sits back from the mic and spins a little bit in his rolling chair, just listening.

He’s still not brave, actually. He used to talk about all kinds of personal shit on the radio—well, not _all_ kinds, but a lot of them—but now that he knows Bev’s listening, he knows he has shit he doesn’t want to let slip. And the idea that there’s something he _can’t_ say—much like when he was a kid and his parents were practically begging him to shut up for ten seconds at a time—makes him _need_ to talk about that.

In all honesty, Rich has had the ring since Russian Tea Time with Bev. He called Wentworth maybe two days after Swing Night, having _lost his damn mind_ but convinced he finally understood the meaning of life. Went was convinced that Rich had done a line of coke or something before calling.

“Modern Love” is Bev’s favorite Bowie song. Rich gets a kick out of it: it’s got the call and response, the Little Richard style piano. Beverly Marsh—now there’s a girl who knows when to go out and when to stay in, get things done. Lately the song makes him think about the ring stuffed in his underwear drawer (and his dad’s grandparents will forgive him, but the ring has spent at least some time in a human digestive tract hiding from the Nazis, so like, what’s the indignity of Rich’s boxers after that?)—“ _Modern Love gets me to the church on time; Church on Time terrifies me, Church on Time makes me party.”_

And honestly, the fact that Rich has kept it together this far without pulling an inappropriate proposal should be cause for celebration. He’s not great at this whole “impulse control” thing. But between the way Bev flinched that one time he went to hand her a towel and the twin black eyes she had when he met her— _Jesus_ —he knows that he’s gotta move like a ballerina on eggshells around the whole idea. Actually, surprise proposals are probably right out—which relieves the part of Richie’s brain that’s frothing-at-the-mouth terrified about the idea and irritates the part that’s fucking dramatic.

Bev’s tough. But he’s still worried he’s gonna spook her. That at some point the other shoe is gonna drop and he’s gonna be too much.

He puts on “I Want to Come Over” after Bowie—it feels appropriate for the introspective weirdos, the insomniacs, the nursing moms, the long-haul truck drivers who listen to him. And, apparently, the occasional sad high school kid up way too late on a school night. Rich does the three to seven show on Saturdays and Sundays, too, which means he’s functionally unusable on weekends, not even good for grocery shopping. He’s not even thirty but he’s pretty sure his partying days are over. He goes to Bev’s shows and he has never fallen asleep in his seat before, and that is about as much as can be expected of him.

Back before he gave up on the whole formal college thing, he went to parties. There were people who liked him in small quantities—people who were into the floppy-haired gangly shit, who let him bum cigarettes and ramble about movies. But Rich never arranged his own social interactions—he went to other people’s parties, he tagged along, he never invited anyone to hang out one on one, and hardly anybody invited him to hang out in turn. And then dropping out left him kind of a rock, an island.

The fact that he remembered how to speak English when he walked up to Bev and act even a _little bit_ like a person is a triumph. He’s never really had _good_ friends, friends who meant something or who wanted to be around him. He might as well have been living in the woods for the last two decades.

He always thought the love-at-first-sight stories were bullshit, too; and then he saw this gorgeous red-haired girl at a bar—a _slow_ bar, too—and he felt like he was dying and losing his damn mind at the same time. So it turns out the romcoms weren’t all bullshit. Sometimes you see the only woman in the world through a fish tank and you think _Oh, she doth teach the torches to burn bright_. Or something like that. He looked up and had the lightning-strike moment of _and then I saw her!_

Turns out, lightning happens on its own. With no regard for Richie’s personal beliefs.

And then he was filled with the panic of _oh my god I never thought this would happen for me, please don’t walk away from me, please don’t tell me it’s just me, please don’t tell me I’ll never see you again, please, please, please._ If he were another kind of guy maybe he would have gotten down on his knees in the lounge and begged her to give him crumbs. If Rich were maybe four drinks deeper into the night, maybe he would already have been that guy.

He called his mom and told her he’d met his wife. (He still hasn’t told Bev that he’s had these thoughts, because he’s trying to come off as a little bit less crazy than he feels.) Maggie was amused and far more indulgent than Wentworth was, when Went got on the phone.

Rich suspects that Maggie has the proprietary interest of a woman who hopes one day to have grandchildren and would really prefer that those grandchildren will be legitimate. (He might not have asked Bev to marry him, but she’s not interested in kids. He asked. So that’s one thing that he won’t be telling Maggie.) He also suspects that she’s relieved.

The thing with Sandy was almost accidental. There was this pre-law student who seemed to glory in giving Rich shit. And Rich was totally happy to be given shit, because any kind of attention was the right kind of attention, and it turned out that arguing turned Sandy on, and Rich was happy to have her taking potshots at him if that was the end result too.

Sandy didn’t break up with him for being too much. She broke up with him for being “uninvested,” which means _not enough_ , and Rich has felt paralyzed between two extremes since then, unable to make a right move.

The point is that one woman is a fluke. Two is a pattern. The conditions are reproducible: Rich is capable of relationships, which seems far more reassuring than being capable of relationship. Rich is capable of relating.

He gets back on the call and says, “Okay, I’m gonna play one more track for you and then we’re taking another caller, so get ready.” He recites the number in the faint singsong tone he gets when he knows something truly back to front.

He puts on “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want,” because it’s mournful and he’s never claimed to be subtle.

The thing about lightning—if it happened to anyone but him, Rich would still think he was out of his mind. If he had a friend who told him this story, he would tell him that he needed to back off that woman and stop being a creep. Bev is stunning—obviously. She walked into the room and Rich was stunned, and then he felt a kind of rising panic in his throat that any moment now she would walk away from him, and he would never see her again, and he couldn’t let that happen, he had to do something—

And that whole train of thought is so deranged and stalker-esque that he’s ashamed of it. He’s admitted to an instant feeling of _something_ for her, and she can take that however she likes (he doesn’t care if she thinks he’s thinking with his dick, because that’s honestly probably part of it), but he thinks that if he ever admitted to the full depth of _need_ behind that moment of introduction, she would be horrified. Because she should be.

Actually, knowing Bev, she’d probably just laugh at him and say, “Jesus, Rich,” in that smoke-thick voice of hers. And Rich would feel excoriated somehow, but also tingling, like she’d raked across his scalp with her fingernails.

His next caller is a long-haul truck driver. This portion of his audience makes Richie glad that he doesn’t do his sleepy voice the whole time; that sometimes the Voices leap out of him and he’s suddenly doing British or a bad and probably offensive Irish or hard Rs like German or a Southern drawl. It happens, just when people let him talk. The thing about late-night radio is that a lot of his audience is listening to him because they’re trying to fall asleep, but a lot of his audience is also listening to him because there’s no one else there to be awake with them.

“Wait, what did you say your name is?” Rich asks. He’s not trying to be a dick, because the guy has an accent, but it’s a British accent; and Rich has never heard this name before. Also he knows that the longer he tries to talk to this guy, the more he’s going to automatically mimic the guy’s voice, until it’s going to sound like he’s making fun of him.

“Bodhi,” the guy repeats.

“Bodhi,” Rich says again. “Did I get that right?”

The guy gives a short, almost nervous laugh. “Yeah. It’s a Buddhism thing.”

“Yeah, my parents named me Richard, it’s a white people thing,” Rich says. “Actually, I know that’s not fair, I love Little Richard, and I mean that in the completely FCC-acceptable way.”

Bodhi on the line gives a short laugh, because Rich is just putting off the reason that he called in, so Rich tries to get to the point. Or at least, closer to the point.

“So, where you from, Bodhi? Because this is Illinois, and I don’t hear a lot of the Queen’s from my audience. Also: are your parents hippies?”

“Uh, no, they’re Buddhists,” Bodhi says reasonably.

“Yeah, I should have seen that coming,” Rich admits. There are a lot of hippies who want to be Buddhists, but he’s also pretty sure that there are a lot of Buddhists with little to no patience for hippies. The part of Richie that has always kind of wanted to be a hippie is a little disappointed. “You always drive past Chicago?”

“I’ve heard you more than once,” the truck driver allows. It’s kind of evasive, but Rich isn’t in the business of interrogating his callers. He’s in the business of filling up the hours. He devours them.

“I am damned by faint praise once again. You should give my mother lessons,” Rich says. “What’re you calling in about, Bodhi? What’s shaking on your end?”

The caller takes a long pause before he asks, “What do you think it means, to do the right thing?”

Rich whistles into the mic. Steve glares at him through the glass. “Yeah, sorry, I know that was bad audio,” he says at large, both to Steve and to the audience. “You’re really not pulling any punches with the existential dread here, are you?”

“Hard to get out of it,” the guy allows.

“Well, lucky for you, I’m a part-time philosopher, by which I mean I sometimes take community college classes with a dude named Phil,” Rich says. “But, like, really, if you want to have any kind of conversation with meaning after sunset, this always happens. Can you be a little more specific? Give me some context?”

“Uh, for legal reasons, I think I’d better not.”

Rich lets his eyebrows shoot up. “Damn, Bodhi.” Then he catches himself and cringes an apology at Steve. “Well, I won’t ask you if it’s for your legal reasons or mine. I’ve never had my tapes played as evidence in a courtroom, and while I won’t say I’d be _disappointed_ to have to testify, it sounds really inconvenient. So: the question you are proposing is, what does it mean ‘to do the right thing’? Is that it? Is there more?”

“I guess,” Bodhi says. He sounds downhearted.

“I guess first you gotta define the right thing,” Rich says. “And you gotta define ‘right,’ and to do that, you gotta define ‘morality.’ I don’t know, I never got all that trolley problem bull—BS.”

Steve is still watching him, this time with an impatient look. Rich waves a hand at him—he’s not about to try to break down morality in this talk break between songs; if he wanted to do that, he probably could have stayed in college. Or he could have stayed dating Sandy, and hashed it out maybe while under the influence of actual hash.

“Like—say you have three doors,” Rich says. “And they say, like— _bad, worse, and worst_. Say you have no good options. Is this ringing a bell?”

There’s a faint note of hysteria in Bodhi’s responding laugh. “You could say that.”

“I mean, in a practical sense, I think you should try to do the least harm that you can,” he says. “I think you should try to take the path that hurts the fewest people, and you should try to look out for the little guy and the people you care about, and you should try not to hurt other people. But like—I’m a big fan of taking a third option. Not in the three doors. But, like, say you’re in front of the three doors. You don’t have to choose a door. You can just light out of there, right? Is getting out of the situation entirely an option?”

“No,” Bodhi says.

“No.” Rich sighs. “It’s like that, sometimes, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.” He shrugs a little. “I feel like I’m speechifying here.” He rubs at the back of his head, just because he has to fidget with something, and when he speaks, he speaks very slowly. “I think that there are bad things in this world, to be honest, dude. I think that there are bad things, and there are bad people, and sometimes there’s just so much shhhh—bad stuff in this world, it’s hard to go on. I look outside my window, and I think, I know what the right thing is, and it’s the opposite of whatever is going on out there right now.

“My dad says that’s just because I see things in black and white. I don’t think that, though. I don’t think that there’s always a white side to things. Maybe, like, black and gray? I think that there are people out there, and those people need to be in check, but I also think that they’re not, and that checks and balances aren’t doing shh— _anything_ for people like us, and the people responsible for looking after the little guy aren’t doing their jobs, and in moments like that—”

He glances up and finds that Steve is giving him an incredulous look.

“—and my legal counsel here is telling me that I should not be advocating for vigilante justice on the radio right now. But do you know what I’m talking about?”

“Not vigilante justice?” Bodhi asks quizzically.

“Nope, not vigilante justice at all,” Rich says. He sighs. “Just, like. Refusing to turn a blind eye. Seeing people getting hurt, and doing whatever you can to… to help that. I think that’s the right thing. I don’t know, man, it’s complicated. Also I feel like my brain is trying to expand beyond the confines of my skull, so I might be reaching the end of my capacity for existential theory. Unless you want to give me some more specifics.”

“Uh,” Bodhi says.

Rich waits and then says, “Yeah, I figured.” He leans down and holds his hair with both hands. “I don’t know, man. I got the snot kicked out of me basically every day in high school. I didn’t take anything seriously. Nobody ever did anything about that. Not even me. So, like, a kid calls and says they had a rough day at school—I can’t do anything about that, from a practical sense. I mean, like, even if I did barge in and force, like, a student-teacher conference, if that’s a thing, I don’t know it would get anywhere. I can’t fix everything. But I feel like I gotta do my little bit of good to try and fight the badness in the world. Take care of the people that I can. Does that help?”

“I mean… it’s complicated,” Bodhi says, which is probably a nicer way of saying no.

“Yeah, I know. Wish I could wrap this whole thing up in one three-minute speech on radio.” He pauses and then asks, “Can you sing, Bodhi?”

Bodhi is quiet, and then he says, “I can rap.”

Rich sits up. “Oh _man_ , please tell me you can freestyle some sh—stuff right here, that’d go down so smooth.”

* * *

He gets back home and Bev is sitting up in his bed, which is always the nicest way to arrive. She’s usually still there—she comes over after work for her and before work for him, and then they sleep until noon and do it again. She’s wearing one of his t-shirts with her knees tucked up under it, and she’s worrying at the pack of Winstons with both hands, but not actually opening it up.

“Is it too cold to smoke?” he asks, because that hasn’t stopped them before. He’s got, like, this terrible little window and if he points a box fan directly at it he thinks he gets most of the scent out of the apartment. Also she knows she’s welcome to put on any of his clothes that she likes, if she gets cold.

“Nah, just thinking,” she says. “I was listening.”

“Did you hear the rap?” Richie asks. “Please, _please_ tell me you heard the rap. I don’t care if we get sued by Lucasfilm; that’s gonna be one of the highlights of my career.”

“I did hear the rap,” she says, smiling. She prefers _Star Trek_ to _Star Wars_ , and he can respect that. “How’s your head?”

He wobbles his head from side to side. “No headache,” he says. He’s allowed to dress like a slob to go to work, really, because no one will see him, so he starts peeling out of his flannel shirt and his hoodie and kind of tossing them wherever they’ll fit in the room. She’s used to it by now. “I am cold.”

“Oh, are you?”

“Uh-huh.” He flops down on the bed beside her and the springs creak.

Someday he’s going to do that and the whole mattress will rip out of the frame, and he’ll have to go find a new sofabed because he won’t be able to fit both sofa and bed in this tiny-ass apartment. He won’t drag her over onto him, but she does set her Winstons on the end table and roll on top of him, and he throws the blanket over her shoulders and luxuriates. He feels like toast. But—actually, the bread is the warm part of buttered toast, and he’s definitely the butter here. Bev’s warm.

She puts her elbow on his chest and props herself up, hand cupping her cheek. “So what do you think morality is?”

He groans, but he doesn’t actually mind. There’s always something to talk about with Bev. Granted, a lot of the time it’s fucking stupid shit, but there’s always something to talk about.

“You first,” he says. “I gave an impromptu soliloquy there. Steve was not impressed.”

“Is Steve ever impressed?”

“He has been impressed. In the past. Not by me.”

“I’m very impressed.”

“Are you?”

“No.”

He grins at that and she kisses his nose. “So, Beverly Marsh, unpack ethics for me right here.”

She sways a little bit, rolling her weight from side to side. It focuses his attention wonderfully, but probably not for the reasons she wants. Then again, she does seem to get something out of leading him around by his dick, judging by the small smile she shoots him and the way she does it again and again.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I think I agree with what you said, about there being evil in the world. I don’t even think all of it’s evil for the sake of evil, I think some of it’s about ignorance and shame and doing things the way that they’ve always been done, or the way that other people say they should be.”

“I wish I were a hippie,” Rich sighs.

She tilts her head to the side. “I could see that,” she says.

Richie hums a bit of “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”

She grins at him and idly pulls his glasses off his face, turning them around and placing them on the bridge of her nose. Her eyes are a marshy-green appropriate to her name, and she blinks at him foggily from behind them. “I don’t know that I know what to do about it either.”

“Your best?” Rich suggests.

Bev shrugs a little.

“Your best is pretty damn good,” he says. He believes that. Sometimes Bev’s competence terrifies him, watching her storm around when she’s getting ready for something, the way that she without fail hits deadlines, her astonishing self-control. “So what do we do?”

She shrugs again. “Fight ignorance where we find it?” she says. “And confusion. And… fear.”

Rich has a moment where he feels like someone has walked over his grave. Then it passes. He doesn’t even shudder under her. He wonders if, blinded by his glasses as she is, she caught any of it. There’s no canny, knowing expression on her face, prompting him to spill his secrets.

“Hey, do you want to be superheroes together?” he asks.

She grins at him. “Yeah.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.” He brings one hand up and holds her wrist, just companionably; her bones are like champagne flutes. She can shove him around with all her strength, but he’ll always be a little afraid of breaking her. “You want to enact vigilante justice together?”

“I mean, why not? We’re already up nights.”

“Yeah, but what if we get caught?”

“Well, I’m part of an underground society already,” Bev says. “I don’t think it’ll affect my prospects that much.”

“Oh, you’d never get caught,” he says. “I’m the big galoot, they’ll catch me in a heartbeat.” Almost in response, his heart thuds in his chest, but he makes himself spit out the rest. Just raising the idea. Floating it, though he doesn’t know why the term, in his head, makes him want to cringe. “Promise not to testify against me?”

She raises her eyebrows and takes his glasses off. “I don’t know,” she says. “I wouldn’t want to be held in contempt of court.”

“Yeah,” he says, and lifts his chin so she can carefully slide the legs of his glasses back over his ears, and settle the bridge onto his nose. “Wonder what we could do to prevent that?”

“Aside from not getting caught?” she asks.

She’s not stupid; she knows what he’s suggesting. “Yeah, aside from that.” He turns his head and kisses her palm. With her other hand she scratches into his chest, just idly. It’s easy; he’s hairy as fuck.

“I don’t know,” she says quietly. “You should let me think on it. I’ll be the mastermind.”

He kisses her palm again. It’s a soft no, but it’s also more a yellow light than a red. She’s not getting up and leaving, for one thing. “All right,” he says. “I trust you.”

He lets his head tilt back. He didn’t bother setting down on a pillow, and at the angle he feels almost upside-down, though he knows he’s just horizontal.

“You tired?” Bev asks.

Eyes closed, he says, “Maybe a little. Did you hear that kid sing?”

“She was very good.”

Her thighs are very warm where they’re pressed against his. He would happily sleep like this, with Bev on him like he’s a mattress.

“You heard me play Bowie for you?”

“I did,” she laughs. “You’d play Bowie anyway.”

“Yeah, but that one’s for _you_.”

If Rich were a little younger he thinks he’d make her a mixed tape. As it is, he thinks he’s kind of drafted the tracklist already and is just setting it out piece by piece, letting her wade in before she realizes how deep it is.

“Do girls beat each other up in high school?” Rich asks. It’s an idle question, but it surfaces before he knows what to do with it, and then it’s out of his mouth before he can stop it.

Bev huffs a little laugh; he can feel the flex of her belly. “I never got beat up,” she says. “And I wasn’t popular. They, like, called me a slut and dumped garbage on me, but they never hit me.”

“Hmm.” Richie rocks from side to side, making Bev sway. She clings onto his shoulders and laughs a little, despite the subject matter. “Part of why I like my hours.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. My own bunch of weirdos. My little _co-te-rie_ —” Every syllable comes out as crisp as the truck driver’s accent earlier. “—of losers, you know how it is.”

“Me included?” Bev asks.

He slings an arm over her back and opens his eyes to check, make sure she knows what’s about to happen. He can see her bracing herself just from the shift of her shoulders, and then he rolls to the side and slings her onto the mattress. She laughs as she goes, bouncing her head against the overstuffed back of the couch. He holds himself carefully over her so as not to crush her and palms at the top of her head, careful not to hurt her, but she’s still grinning.

“You can be the queen of the losers,” he says. “The best of the best.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This cameo is particularly unsubtle.
> 
> Also: Wentworth Tozier is 100% the dad from _Calvin & Hobbes_. Why? I love _Calvin & Hobbes_.


	3. Eddie, Now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Richie Tozier rocked back in his chair so that he was leaning against the wall, caught in the act of saying something to Beverly Marsh, who had a hand cupped over her mouth to hide a giggle; Richie had a wise-ass grin on his face that was perfectly familiar. There was Eddie Kaspbrak, sitting on Beverly's left, and in front of him on the table, next to his water-glass, was a plastic squeeze-bottle with a pistol-grip handle curving down from its top. The trimmings were a little more state-of-the-art, btu the purpose was obviously the same: it was an aspirator. Sitting at one end of the table, watching this trio with an expression of mixed anxiety, amusement, and concentration, was Ben Hanscom." (Stephen King, _IT_ Chapter 10)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Conversation in here is modeled after Stephen King's text; particularly the toast and Bill's response are word-for-word from the book.
> 
> Content warnings for this chapter: alcohol consumption, the ordeal that is dining out with dietary restrictions, food anxiety (Eddie), general anxiety (Eddie), Richie makes a fatphobic joke and nobody laughs. References to animal abuse, rape, and incest. Fatalism.

Eddie comes tight-chested and white-faced to dinner, and the waitress leads him back to meet Hanlon, party of eight. He blinks once, surprised, mentally counting, and wonders who the last member is. Yesterday he wouldn’t have known Mike Hanlon from God himself if they met in the grocery store, and now he remembers the Losers Club—the Lucky Seven—the way you count off the apostles. Stanley Uris, Richie Tozier, Ben Hanscom, Eddie Kaspbrak, Beverly Marsh, Bill Denbrough. Mike Hanlon.

Who is Eddie forgetting?

The waitress, whose nametag says _Rose_ , shows him to a round archway of a private room, separated from the rest of the restaurant by screens, little half walls, and an aquarium swimming in the back. The table is round—the knights of the Round Table, assembled! Was Michael not the leader of heaven’s armies?—and on the opposite side of the room from the door sit a woman with flaming red hair and a man with dark curls, wearing a dress shirt. Across from them, chin propped on his hand and elbow on the table, sits a man dressed like nothing so much as a cowboy. Eddie thinks, confused, _Bill?_ before the man turns his face to him and shows him big sad brown eyes.

Bill had blue eyes. Blue eyes and red hair—and that meant something too, though Eddie can’t recall what it is now. He glances at the woman—Beverly! Of course, Beverly!—and then back at the man smiling at him.

“Eddie,” he says, and he is not Stan. Eddie knows Stan, but Stan was always harder than this, reflective as glass, as chrome.

The guy next to Bev—suit jacket abandoned on his chair behind him—sits up straight so that the front legs of his chair thunk down on the floor, a finite pronouncement. “That’s never little Eddie Kaspbrak,” he says in a broad Southern drawl.

And though it makes no sense, though he’s as alien and familiar to Eddie as Derry is itself, he finds him snapping back, “Richie, you nimrod.” A little boy’s insult.

Richie grins. Eddie knows that wide mouth, those bright blue eyes, though they seem small somehow now without the glasses. What happened to the glasses? The crooked front tooth is still the same. Eddie could identify Richie by his dental records. “Came to play, Eds.”

“Don’t—” Eddie starts, and then he feels a great wrench in his chest, like he’s stumbled off-balance, and he forgets what he was going to say.

Instead, Beverly and the other man chorus from opposite ends of the table, _“—call me Eds.”_

Richie is sucking his teeth in glee. He says, in a thin and tense and high-pitched voice, _“Don’t call me Eds, Richie, I hate it when you call me that, you’re always talking and do you ever say anything? No!”_

Eddie realizes, almost horrified, that the voice is meant to be him. He can’t breathe, all of a sudden, and he fumbles for his aspirator. As soon as he produces it, Richie says, “Hey!” as though in delight.

Bev shakes her head. “Come sit next to me, Eddie,” she says, pulling out the chair on her other side.

“Yeah, he’s ours, you can’t have him, Haystack,” Richie says.

That’s how Eddie realizes that the other man is Ben. He looks around at him in astonishment and Ben gives him a rueful little smile and a half-salute. The eyes—the _eyes_ , Eddie should have known him immediately. The eyes and the quiet and the way he set himself across from the only other people at the table.

Then again, maybe he was setting up to watch the show.

Eddie takes a draw from his aspirator and lets his breath out slowly. He’ll have to rinse his mouth out now, and there’s a pitcher of ice water in the center of the table, resting on the lazy susan. He takes the seat Bev offered him and, flips over his water glass, and pours for himself. The ice cubes make sloppy sounds as they plunge into the glass. Reflexively he turns towards Bev and holds up the pitcher in her direction.

“Yes please, thank you, Eddie,” she says, and turns her glass over. She holds it steady while Eddie pours, and she looks lazily over her shoulder at Richie. “Somebody here remembers what chivalry is.”

Eddie wonders if she had the same thoughts he did about round tables.

“Darling, if it’s chivalry you’re looking for, you caught me on a bad day,” Richie says lazily. He has one elbow propped on the back of Bev’s chair—not quite a reach, not a flirt, but almost performatively casual. “Eddiekins, fill ’er up over here, would you? Better hydrate before we get started.”

He reaches out with his left hand and flips the glass over effortlessly, and the metal of his wedding ring clicks against the side.

A great deluge of ice slides into Bev’s glass and splashes the table. Eddie hisses and fumbles for his napkin, shaking out his cutlery so that he can daub at it, but Richie is reaching over and blotting it with the sleeve of his nice white shirt. He’s wearing the collar open. When the ice water soaks into the fabric it goes transparent over his arm.

“Somebody started pre-gaming early,” Richie says.

Ben has a beer glass, not just a water glass, and he toasts Eddie as though to say, _If you did, I couldn’t blame you_.

“Anyone else here?” Eddie asks thinly. He shoves the pitcher in Richie’s direction—Richie can pour for himself—and contemplates a second haul on his inhaler. But he doesn’t really need it. He sets it at the head of his place setting and sips some water. You have to be careful with inhalers; you don’t want to get a yeast infection in your mouth. It’s never happened to Eddie—but then, Eddie is careful with his inhaler.

Ben shakes his head. “Ran into these two in the parking lot,” he says.

Eddie remembers the existence of the waitress and looks around for her—he needs to warn the kitchen of his allergies as soon as possible—but she’s long gone. He shifts anxiously in his seat. “Guess it can wait,” he murmurs.

“What can wait?” Bev asks, effortlessly sweet. Bev seems somehow more grown up than Eddie anticipated. Her red hair hangs down in sheets on either side of her shoulders, contrasting with the black blazer and white blouse she’s wearing. Eddie looks at her and thinks _ah, an adult. Thank goodness, we needed one._ She also has a wedding ring on, and an engagement ring, with a nice little diamond set in gold and citrines. Eddie wonders if she has any kids by now.

“I have to tell the kitchen about my allergies,” Eddie says, glancing back toward the archway again. There is no sign of Rose. He looks back at the table and pauses.

He counts the chairs. There are seven.

“Didn’t she say party of eight?” Eddie asks.

Bev frowns and Richie’s brow creases in confusion.

“No,” Ben says, quiet but confident. “No, it’s always been seven.”

And Eddie—knows that’s right. He does. They were the Lucky Seven—lucky, because out of all the kids who died in Derry, they made it out alive. But he’s sure that Rose said _Mike Hanlon, party of eight._

“We’re waiting on Mike, Stan, and Bill,” Bev says, and then looks around as though confused too. “Right?”

“Right,” Richie says. “Unless you’re bringing your mother to dinner, Eddiekins. In which case we’re gonna have to clear out that fishbowl over there—” He points at the aquarium. “—to make room for her feeding trough.”

There is no laughter, instead just incredulous looks from everyone at the table. Richie himself goes still and his eyes go unfocused, looking down at the table.

“Beep beep, Richie,” Ben says.

“My mother is dead,” Eddie says, keeping his voice cold and clinical.

Richie looks down at the palm of one hand and then blinks hard, like there’s something in his eyes. Then he looks at Bev and says, “I don’t know why I said that.”

Bev looks away from him and raises her eyebrows as though to say, _Okay, moving on._

They are spared from having to acknowledge what just occurred by two more people joining the party. Rose escorts Mike—immediately identifiable not just by being the only black man in the room, but also by some kind of air of familiarity he brings with him. He wears it folded around his shoulders like an aura. Eddie, perpendicular to the archway and opening and closing his hand rapidly as he tries to decide whether he needs to flag down the waitress now or later, feels it close over him.

There are creases in Mike’s face now. He wrinkled frowning instead of smiling, just like Eddie. A wave of sadness rolls over him to see it on Mike in a way it doesn’t to see it in the mirror. But there’s sincere joy in Mike’s eyes as he looks at them assembled. _I know you,_ Eddie thinks again, unsure why because it’s so obvious; of course he knows Mike. But Mike makes eye contact with him too and that desperate little part of Eddie, wanting acknowledgement, settles at the reply: _I know you too._

Bill smiles to look at all of them. His hair has softened from the true red of their childhood to a rufous brown; Bev puts him to shame now. There’s a bright silver stripe in his hair, and he looks very small standing there next to Mike. The last time that Eddie was carded, he was thirty-two; he wonders if Bill had the same problem until that gray grew in. He’s got a familiar round face and sharp chin.

“Guard your Dalmatians, folks, Bill Denbrough’s here to make a coat out of them,” Richie says, tipping his chair back dangerously again. “Hey, how long do you have to sit with the bleach in your hair at the salon for that?”

Bill’s head snaps around to look at Richie and, with an expression of complete disdain and no hesitation, he says, “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on, Trashmouth.”

They burst apart into laughter, including Richie. Bill seems satisfied, choosing a seat at the table and reaching to shake Ben’s hand, then leaning all the way across for Eddie’s, and then Bev’s. Mike scoots around the edge of the table and chairs, looking too big for the room, and starts ordering drinks. Eddie has to wait his turn until the waitress gets to him, and he takes a short breath and tries to tell himself that’s fine.

Bill and Richie are done sniping at each other and now Bill is admiring Bev’s ring.

“Of course it’s still Marsh,” Bev says. “It’s 2016.”

“Jesus, Bill, I thought it was just how you write women,” Richie sighs.

Bill frowns. “I just meant that some women use different names in their professional lives. My wife does. What’s wrong with the way I write women?”

“Nothing, sweetie,” Bev says, and goes into her purse to pull out new crisp paperback copies of Bill’s books. “While I have you here, make yourself useful.” She fishes out a ballpoint pen.

Bill grins and slides the books across the table. “Maybe I oughta get you to sign something for Audra. You make up half her closet.”

“Your wife’s closeted for Bev?” Richie asks.

Bev reaches out and places a hand on his shoulder as though to ask him to settle, then pats him twice and releases him.

“What are you doing professionally, Bev?” Eddie asks, trying to draw the topic away from the concept of closeting. Eddie’s not exactly out and proud like some of the young kids you see these days, but he also doesn’t fucking lie about it if someone asks. He’s not sure he wants to go there this early in the evening though.

“Oh, took some sewing and some textile design classes, turned it into a fashion label with a friend,” Bev says. “Women’s clothing, mostly. Do you know Marsh McCall?”

Eddie shakes his head. He doesn’t know anything about women’s clothes.

“We know what you’re up to, Ben,” Richie says, staring across the table. Ben, who was politely asking the waitress for another beer, looks up. “Aside from spearheading a Brazilian soccer team, Jesus Christ fuck. What do you do in your spare time, bottle-feed kittens at the animal shelter? You’re the complete fucking package.”

Eddie frowns. He knows what Ben’s doing, but it’s weird to think of the round-faced sweet-eyed kid and then think of the new BBC communications tower. When he tries to remember the moment of their meeting, he gets the phantom sensation of water flowing over his feet. He can’t believe he did that; his mother was always on him not to take his shoes off in public places, not to get his feet wet. That way lay pneumonia, didn’t Eddie know? Look at Bill Denbrough, laid up with mononucleosis, and do you know what happens when you have mononucleosis, Eddie?

Eddie turns his gaze, without conscious thought, towards Bill. He remembers that fall storm, with the water too high to play and no point in going out if Bill wasn’t going to be there while he wheezed out the last of his pneumonia-brought-on-by-the-kissing-disease. Eddie stayed in the clammy heat of his mother’s house, and didn’t hear about Georgie until the rain let up and Stan came over to tell him what happened.

Eddie looks around for Stan, unsure what to do without him. _Seven_ , he tells himself. _Seven, so why did she say eight?_

Rose is here, going around the circle. Richie’s ordering a beer now. Eddie ought to be paying attention, getting ready to give his order and go through the rigmarole of listing out his allergies. Things are better in New York _sometimes_ , where being in the city gives him access to choices, but the opinion of a lot of chefs out there is that if you have dietary restrictions, you can go fuck yourself. He doesn’t really know how he’s going to eat in this Chinese restaurant in backwater Derry.

Also, Eddie never did find out what Ben does in his spare time. He orders a gin and tonic and then begins nervously listing his allergies towards Rose, whose mouth puckers in something like concern. She writes down the list and then tells him she’ll check with the chef.

“Thank you,” Eddie sighs, relieved and suspicious in equal measure.

The rest of the group is still talking.

“I do all right for myself,” Richie says, in what is clearly deep self-aggrandizement masquerading as modesty. “One of the best impressionists in show business, you know, that old bit.”

“Oh, that old bit,” Mike says with a laugh, as though none of this is news to him.

“Jesus, they pay you to do that shit now?” Bill sighs.

“Yeah, so, what is your deal with nipples?” Richie asks. “All your books—nipples, nipples. What’s up with your nipples? Do your nipples function as an emotional barometer? Did I just get defect nipples when they were issuing nipples out there? Because they’ve never done anything other than tell me to turn up the thermostat.”

Mike appears to be trying so hard not to laugh that tears are leaking out of the corners of his eyes. Bill is staring at Richie with his mouth slightly open.

“Look, I’ll show you,” Richie says, and begins unbuttoning his shirt.

“And we’ve reached that portion of the evening,” Bev says.

“Ben, you’re next,” Richie orders. He’s wearing a heathered gray t-shirt under his dress shirt, and despite his threats, he does not show the table his nipples.

“No, thank you,” Ben says.

Eddie, emboldened by the absurdity of Richie starting to strip at the table, says, “What happened to your glasses, Richie?”

Richie, midway through unbuttoning his shirt, looks up. “Hm?”

“Oh, stop,” Bev says, and swats at his forearm. “You know what he means.”

Richie waggles his eyebrows, leans forward across Bev, and intones, “Look into my eyes, Edward Kaspbrak.”

Eddie opens his mouth to reply, decides against it, sighs, and then leans forward to look into Richie’s eyes. The lighting is bad in this restaurant, but Richie lifts his chin fractionally, and Eddie searches around the edges of his irises, flicking from one eye to the other and back.

“Just remember,” Richie says in that same movie trailer voice, “when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you.” And he waggles his eyebrows again.

Eddie catches the edge of the contact lenses and immediately sits back, satisfied and breathless in equal measure. It would be tactless to draw on the inhaler now, for all he feels like he needs it. _He’s married_ , Eddie tells himself. _You wouldn’t do that in front of his wife, now, would you?_

Bev gives him a canny look, holding the top of her water glass. But she says nothing and looks back across the table, where Mike and Ben are leaning over Mike’s phone.

“—obligatory backwoods aerial photo of your property,” Mike is saying. “We had one over the dining room table when I was a kid. So, I figured I’d get one for the library. Fundraising part of the city council isn’t going for it, but I live in hope.”

“Uh-huh,” Ben says dryly. “And you’re showing this to me for no reason at all, right?”

“No reason at all,” Mike agrees, grinning. “Not looking for any royalties from your communications tower or anything.”

Ben shrugs one shoulder as though to brush off the question entirely. “You know I’ll fund it, you old—” He seems to reach for a word for what Mike is and fails, and instead reaches out a hand and places it on Ben’s shoulder.

“My taxi driver told me you went toe to toe against land developers in the city council,” Bill says.

“I’m a paladin of historical preservation,” Mike says seriously.

Ben chuckles. “You old paladin, you.”

“Knights of the round table,” Eddie murmurs.

Bev looks around at him. “What was that?”

“Oh, I was just thinking,” Eddie says. “The round table and everything.”

Bev bites her lower lip and tilts her head back. “I don’t think I ever learned those stories,” she says quietly. “I know of them, but I don’t know them properly, you know?”

“Oh, they’re horrible stories,” Eddie says. They’re full of kings who rape their sisters and marry their great-nieces, but he has an idea that admitting such things in detail in front of Bev is too heavy for this early in the night, and Eddie’s not a master of literature or anything. But the Arthurian ballads are something of a foundational text for England, as far as he knows. He glances back up at Mike, wondering if all the legends of places have to be terrible.

“So how are you making your money today, Eds?” Richie demands loftily, as though that isn’t the most indelicate way to phrase the question.

Bev smiles and draws the sting. “Tell me you became a doctor,” she says.

Eddie doesn’t know why, but he blushes for Bev’s comment and not Richie’s. “I—I’m a risk analyst,” he says.

“Oh, that sounds very interesting, what’s that about?” Richie asks.

Eddie feels a sinking sensation of _this is a trap_. “I work for a big insurance firm in New York and we—”

Richie interrupts him with a loud snoring sound. Everyone at the table looks at him.

Eddie feels suddenly spotlit, as though the silence is poitned at him instead of Richie. “Fuck you, dude,” he says automatically, profanity spilling out of his mouth on reflex. “Fuck you.”

Richie quits faking sleep and sits up, grin wide and almost painfully genuine. The crooked tooth in the front is on full display. “Fuck you!” he returns, looking delighted.

A responding surge of joy rises in Eddie’s chest—this is familiar, this is comfortable, this is well-worn ground, this is where he belongs. He looks away, almost ashamed, and catches Ben hiding a smile behind his beer glass. “What the fuck are you laughing at?” he snaps at him, and Bev, Bill, and Mike all laugh harder in response, as Ben puts up both hands.

The drinks come. Eddie’s gin and tonic is all gin. He takes a sip and blinks, and is about to say something to Rose, when a figure stumbles into the archway.

He stops and looks at them all. Stan’s curls are wild and flyaway and he says, all in a rush, “Sorry I’m late, I don’t want to talk about it.” He slides into the seat between Eddie and Ben, apologizing to the waitress.

“Stanley!” Bill and Richie chorus at the same time.

Stan waves them off and orders a whiskey without hesitation. He’s wearing a cardigan, his glasses dangle from the placket there, and when poor Rose asks him what kind of whiskey he’d like, he says, “Frankly, my dear, I do not care.”

“Wild Turkey,” Ben says. “And make it two, please.”

Stan nods tiredly and then looks up at Ben. “ _Ben Hanscom?”_ he asks incredulously.

“That’s what I said!” Richie says.

“That is not what you said, that’s his name,” Eddie snaps back. If he had to come up with a word for how he feels, watching Stan stagger haggard into the restaurant, it’d be _heartsore_ , though for the life of him he cannot understand why. He sips his G&T through the little black cocktail straw. It’s so strong. It’s all G. He drinks it anyway, without complaint.

“Well, now it’s a party,” Richie says. “Where you coming in from, Stan the Man?”

“Georgia,” Stan replies.

“Yeah, I got that from your Clark Gable. Really, though.”

Stan reaches out and his hands shake as he tries to pour himself a glass of water. He seems oddly winded. “Really, Georgia.”

“I have had it with this motherfucker,” Richie announces, turning to Bev as though he expects her to do something about it. Bev hides a giggle behind her hand.

Stan flips Richie off without looking up and drinks from his water glass with the urgency of a man who has come through a desert. “What’d I miss?”

“Well, Bill married a movie star, Mike is hitting Ben up for money because librarying doesn’t pay so good, Eddie’s job was invented before fun, Bev’s too feminist for the rest of us, and nobody wants to see my nipples,” Richie says.

“Oh, so business as usual,” Stan says, and leans back in his chair and closes his eyes.

Everybody looks at him.

“You doing all right, Stanley?” Ben asks hesitantly.

“Peachy,” Stan replies.

“ _Jaw-ja_ peachy,” Richie drawls.

Without opening his eyes, Stan says, “That’s my word, keep it out of your damn mouth, Rich.”

There’s a moment of awkward silence. Then Stan cracks an eye, gives Richie a long look, and smirks.

Richie bursts into guffaws, and like that the tension breaks. Stan fumbles for his glasses to read the menu and answers questions about his life while he squints looking for kosher options: yes, he’s married. Her name is Patricia, she’s an elementary school teacher, she’s wonderful. No, he didn’t go to rabbinical school, he became an accountant. They do nicely for themselves.

“I am so hungry,” Stan almost growls into the menu, and then Rose comes back with his and Ben’s whiskey. “Thank you so much,” he says to her politely, and lifts his glass as though ready to swig the whole thing back.

“Hang on, hang on,” Richie says, tapping at his glass with his knife.

Eddie, already halfway through his G&T on an empty stomach, looks up. Richie holds up his glass in a clear invitation for a toast.

Bev has a laugh in her voice when she asks, “But what do we drink to?”

Eddie watches as the smile slides from Richie’s face. “To us,” he says, not joking at all, instead looking terribly grave. Eddie glances across the table and sees Bill nod, sees him pick up his drink with a hand that shakes just as badly as Stan’s. They all feel it. Stan’s here, making seven, but there’s an eighth in the room, an unwelcome eighth. They know It’s there as surely as It knows they’re here.

“To the Losers’ Club of 1989,” Richie says.

Bev smiles. “The Losers,” she echoes.

Eddie, beside her, feels he has no choice but to agree. “The Losers,” he says, holding up his half-empty glass.

They go around the table. Bill ends it—Bill always began and ended things, Eddie remembers. They clink glasses. Stan and Ben throw back their whiskey; Ben hardly blinks, while one of Stan’s eyes scrunches shut.

“So spill it, Mikey,” Bill says. “Tell us what’s happening here, and what we’re gonna do about it.”

Stan coughs, once, and puts his fist to his mouth.

“Eat first,” Mike says. “We’ll talk afterward.”

They’ve been talking so far, but about things that don’t mean anything. What does the outside world matter, when they’re all in a room together? What does Eddie’s job and his week of time off for a family emergency (a family he doesn’t have, or that at least he didn’t remember he had), the only PTO he’s taken in the last eight years, matter? Come to think of it, what do the rings on anyone’s hands matter, when they’re all here alone?

“No, not married,” Eddie replies shortly, when asked. He’s pulling beef off a skewer and onto his little pile of rice. He wants protein, wants the staying power.

“No kids?” Stan asks, looking around at the table in general.

The general consensus is no. “But we have a dog with a thriving social media presence,” Bev reports, irony heavy in her voice.

Richie coughs a laugh. “And that’s basically like having a kid, right?”

Stan looks at Richie in narrow-eyed disgust. “You think that having a dog is like having a child?”

“I think that having social media is like having a child,” Richie says. “I pay someone to do that shit for me.” He shudders.

“Hey, what the fuck are you wearing, Trashmouth?” Bill asks, and Eddie gets concerned that he’s provoking Richie into taking off his clothes again. But instead Bill nods in the vicinity of Richie’s left hand. “You got married?”

Richie’s face flattens out in something like surprise, and he looks around the table with the same expression that Eddie felt some minutes ago— _this is a trap_. Eddie feels a sudden skewering expectation—god, did Richie marry a man? He never would have imagined that when they were kids, never would have even dreamed, but it’s completely possible. Mike watches the table with the aura of a man who’s in on the secret, but he doesn’t say anything.

“Uh, yeah,” Richie says slowly, as though questioning whether Bill understands what wedding rings are for.

Ben sits up. “No way,” he says.

Stan sinks back a little in his seat, his water glass in hand, looking more comfortable now. “Where do I send my condolences?”

“Uh—” Richie’s awkward grin widens. “Guys, are you serious?”

Bev is covering her mouth, but it’s doing nothing to hide her giggles.

“Clearly we’re fucking serious,” Eddie says, both tired of the topic and longing for an answer. He stabs through a piece of beef with his fork and straight down into a battered and fried piece of sweet potato beneath it. He barely tastes it as he chews.

“Is this a wife fight?” Richie asks, glorying in the attention. “Are we having a good old-fashioned wife fight right now, Denbrough?”

Eddie feels a little disappointed—partly because the idea that Richie might have a husband seems disproven now, though he doesn’t know why it would make any difference if Richie had married a man; and partly that he himself is not married, so he cannot make the joke about bringing a husband to a wife fight.

Bev steals the last egg roll from the lazy susan while the rest of the table is distracted. Ben seems to notice it, his eyebrows shooting up and gesturing abortively with his chopsticks, but when Bev holds it out to him as though to ask if he wants it, he shakes his head and waves for her to take it. Bev looks mischievously pleased, as though she’s gotten away with something. Eddie feels a smile tug at the corners of his mouth despite himself.

“All right, in this corner we have Stanley Uris, married an elementary school teacher, way to bring finally bring your lifelong crush on Mrs. Kerr from second grade to fruition, very well done, consider that landing stuck.”

Stan invites him to “Eat shit. I did not have a crush on Mrs. Kerr, I was seven.”

“You brought home the Kerr bear every week.”

“I brought home the Kerr bear every week because I was a good fucking citizen, jackass.”

“You won by default.”

“A win by default is still a win.”

“You have been a square since birth and I love you for it, Stanley Urine,” Richie says. He gestures to Bill. “William.”

“Richard,” Bill returns, mimicking Richie’s announcer tone.

“Say I happen to be familiar with the young Ms. Phillips. We have met in passing, done some work together.”

“The young Ms. Phillips is eight years older than you, you cornhole,” Bill says.

Richie grimaces and then nods. “So did you meet her standing outside a convenience store and get her to buy you booze, or?”

“Fuck you,” Bill says congenially.

“Fuck you,” Richie returns, a little less animated than he was cursing out Eddie. Eddie feels oddly annoyed. “So we all married up, gentlemen.” He picks up his glass and gives Bill the shit-eatingest grin Eddie’s ever seen on Richie Tozier. “I married Bev.”

For a moment Eddie’s hearing cuts out entirely. It’s the auditory input equivalent of a sudden blackout, all electronics humming in the background suddenly going silent.

Then Bev speaks. “You dick,” she says, affection in her voice, and swings her chopsticks over to him to stuff a shrimp in his mouth, and the world starts up around Eddie again.

Richie accepts the indecorous delivery of shrimp and chews messily. “That’s my name, don’t wear it out,” he says with his mouth full.

Ben stares between Bev and Richie, open-mouthed and just as thunderstruck as Eddie feels. “I—for real?”

“Yes, for real,” Richie says, as though insulted Ben would cast aspersions on his integrity like that.

Eddie, who loves Richie but doesn’t trust him as far as he can throw him, looks over at Mike. Mike surveys the table, catches Eddie’s eye, and nods in mute affirmation.

Eddie finishes his G&T.

“Oh, I am right there with you,” Stan says to Eddie, looking around for Rose. “I am so sorry, Beverly, I wanted better for you.”

Bev laughs.

“Yeah, yeah, eat shit, Stanley,” Richie says, but he still looks smug. Like he’s gotten away with something.

Eddie looks from him to Bev, how between her pale face and her bright hair she seems to glow in the dim room. _You love her, she loves you, she was practically your sister_ , he reminds himself, and tries to keep his thoughts kind and friendly towards her.

But he’s never been able to control himself around Richie. When he looks at Richie he feels the crack of the thunder in the back of his head and thinks, _You were mine first_.


End file.
